The Soul's Tariff

By Jay T Wright

"The artistic and personal world of 16th-century Venice is beautifully evoked in Wright's kaleidoscopic novella... Wright's Tintoretto is a wonderfully convincing fictional creation, an inspired combination of brilliance and a contemplative kind of pessimism...particularly Venetian mordant humor filters throughout Wright's dialogue-rich book... Wright also does a first-rate job succinctly painting the tense international background in which Venice is threatened both by the Habsburgs in the north and the Ottomans in the east. The whole thing is fast-paced and entirely satisfying. Recommended." - Historical Novel Society. When a telescope arrives in Venice from the East, Jacopo Robusti, better known as the painter Tintoretto, is asked to examine and replicate it. In the winter of 1571 Cyprus has fallen. The Habsburgs press on the Venetian State from the north. War with the Ottoman Empire is coming to the seas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay T Wright
• Release date: Jan 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463662502

Jay T Wright

Jay Wright’s work has been published with more than a dozen literary presses including Windriver Press’s The Paumanok Review, Tachyon, Alternate Realities, Curve, Left Curve with readings at City Lights Bookstore, Cherry Bleeds and Duct Tape Press. He has also worked with Aardman and contributed to the Star Trek franchise, as well as several bestselling video games.His films and videos have appeared in the Biennial of Poetry and Video MUNAL. They are carried by Museo de Nacional in Mexico, the Vatican Contemporary, NMAC Montenmedio Arte Contemporaneo in Spain, MAMAC Nice, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, PS1 in New York and the Pompidou.His first novel King of Siam was published by Duct Tape Press. Invisible City, another novel which explores themes first presented in King of Siam was orphaned by Doubleday, but has found new life in the digital world. Exiles was attached to Bantam but was not published by them.He has been nominated for a Guggenheim and invited to Arsenal at the Berlin Film Festival and also to the Canary Islands and Florence Biennials, and won several best fest awards at film festivals. His films have also appeared at Cannes Short Film Corner and Clermont-Ferrand. His education includes UC Berkeley, and a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute where he worked with members of Cinema 16 and Warhol’s Factory.

Book preview

The Soul’s Tariff

By

Jay Wright

copyright 2019 Jay Wright

book design by Underground Assembled

cover art ‘Venice At Night’ by Jay Wright

published by Underground Assembled

Library of Congress Number: 202390255

…your master is a servant of the devil…

-Sperone Spironi

CELESTIAL CARTOGRAPHY

Quietly the crystalline spheres click though their discrete circular motions. The world has gotten smaller, more specific, as ships have sailed out and back over the last hundred years.

Venice controls the seas and trade of the Mediterranean. Europe’s primary contact with the East takes place through Venetian ports. From Peking and Sumatra in the Orient, Delhi via Constantinople, Alexandria and Marrakech in North Africa, all trade passes through Venetian markets.

The Ottoman Empire, Muslims led by Selim, advance from their seat of power at Topkapi in Constantinople. They cross Croatia towards central Europe, roused from slumber by the crusades. The Ottomans occupy the central Mediterranean sea and encroach on the ports of the Italian city-states. Especially those of Venice. Six years of fighting has led to the siege of Cyprus. Controlled by Venice, the Ottomans desire to recapture the island for their empire.

The last fires of the inquisition ravage Spain. The Moors have been driven out seventy years previous. The island of Granada, with its large Moorish population, has recently been purged by a Spanish military campaign, the Moorish resistance fueled by Ottoman weaponry.

Consolidation through family marriage has brought the Austrian Holy Roman Empire, Flanders in the Netherlands, and Naples in southern Italy under the auspices of the kingship of Spain. The Holy Roman Empire, led by the less than competent Maximillian, hides behind his truce with the Ottomans, watching the last years of the peace it has brought tick down to the treaty’s end.

Money has begun to be the primary force of diplomacy. The Medicis in Florence, and the Doge of Venice, an elected duke, fight constantly for power in the Italian region. The other kingdoms have their own armies: the Milanese, the Romans, the Florentines, the Neapolitans, the Pisans. The warring city-states have nothing in common except trade and the Italian language.

The Catholic Church, embattled with Lutheranism in Germany has drawn ranks on a crippled Rome. The counter-reformation sees people taken from their homes and tried as heretics. Still, they remain the only truly centralized power in Europe.

In England, Elizabeth has just been excommunicated. The ports of Japan have been pried open by English sea power.

Exodus to the New World has begun. Maps of the world are still hotly debated. Trade routes change yearly as discoveries and advances are made. Latitude and accurate mapping are a dream two hundred fifty years away. Sailors rely on dead reckoning brought to Europe by Muslim traders.

Spinning above this new Earth, round, bounded by crystalline spheres, the geometries of Greece, or perhaps as some suspect far stranger clockings, the plan seems well underway, in motion, mapped out. Individuals breathe in and out. The universe, so they have discovered and been frightened by, moves in many directions at once. They sleep, and eat, and buy comfort. People attend to the rituals of life, whatever their beliefs. The price of these moments is well established. People move through both these maps at once, heavenly and earthly, only gleaning a little of their surroundings, their Gods, their soul.

Venice, Winter 1570-

The Painter-

From within a postern door, scuola groaning under weight of rain.

Swimming towards the surface, a jump from the inbetween places to the present. A hand on his shoulder.

Master. The hand lightly shaking him. Piacere, Signore.

‘I am awake, Rodolfo."

The sounds of feet scuffing mixed with the pounding weight of rain. Smell of lamps being cleaned, black oil deposits, linseed pressed and cloudy, other resins such as turpentine, rabbit skin, even more. The occuli from the preparatory process in various states of disassembly. The stone floor of Scuola radiates cold. Jacopo has awakened, cocooned almost, inside layers of furs.

A message from the Doge, Master.

The colors? Are they mixed?

Si, Signore.

Good.

The cold brutal after the dark furs, some warm dream. He's alone with his wife, they are young, somewhere long ago, one of the outer islands...

The Doge, Master.

Yes. A slow climb to his feet. Aching limbs of late. Walking out of the small enclosed room where a painting from ten years ago stands. Sometimes he hears his students whispering about it. That he will never make one as good again. Or that it was his last stand against the taste of the times, and now he will forever be an outsider, and looked down upon. This time of night, it is hard not to let the words of his teachers and his own doubts get the better of him. Beside him a new painting, nothing more than a coat of glue, plaster, ground elements dug from the earth and crushed, broad gestures of the journeyman applied awaiting his finishes. He has been here for days, sleeping a few hours at a time when he can no longer stand to work. They come and go, day and night have merged, he has lost compass and clock. A ceiling piece – when it is finished the new painting will be winched overhead and secured tightly with bolts to the stone. Half completed in two years, crisscrossings, hatchings, the canvas ready for the tint, Tintoretto, Jacopo Robusti’s famous black gesso. Working it again in white chalk after the application of the gesso. Always thinking, this dyemaker’s son. His line makes teaching the tricks of perspective to the journeymen difficult - they never read the Greek texts he gives them.

He can barely see the older painting. The upper main hall, Superiore, disappearing into night. Chaotic noise of rain. Lamps - islands of light far away in the dim upper story of the Scuola. The painting, a crucifixion, lost to gloom behind him.

A painting a year? How did he ever think he could manage a painting a year? Jacopo creates as many as he can, trying to become a directing member of the Venetian painters’ guild, making the same amount of time for the guild each year. Other duties intrude – church reform, poetry, his marriage. He hates this time of year, he hates being separated from his wife. And now, with the world as it is... Every moment counts. To get older. Always this thought between them that there would be more time, and it has only gotten more difficult. At least he and Faustina have the children.

Which one is it? he asks Rudolfo

The younger one. One of the Doge’s night pages.

Descending the staircase, a few paintings slotted into mounts here and there, the guild works continually on the hall

The page standing just inside the doorway of San Rocco, the guild building, the rain seeping through under the door, Jacopo’s assistants and the night guards of the guild haven't let the page move past the entranceway. A miserable youth in miserable conditions. If it had been the other page, they would have let him enter, offered him tea or hot wine. The look on his face, rage and intemperance. This one Jacopo loathes. Officious and young, obviously in the pocket of one of the Council of Ten. It has never been a secret about the pages and the Doge's advisory panel but officious irks Jacopo on a more fundamental level. It is an affront to God.

Yes? Jacopo asks the page.

The Doge requires your presence, Signore Robusti.

At this hour? Jacopo says, more for the benefit of the night guards and Rudolfo.

Signore, and the page gestures towards the door.

Rudolfo asks, What shall I do, Master Tintoretto?

If the pigments are mixed, there is nothing but to finish what remains. Sleep, Rudolfo. Let the rain lull you to sleep. We will begin again in earnest tomorrow. Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto steps into the dark storm after the page.

Traveling overland behind the page. Marauders on the waters, it's not safe anymore, the city seems to know nothing of itself as the years turn onward, its back to the noises it hears at night on the canals. He tries not to be indifferent but... What does God make of this? A test. Surely.

San Rocco falls away.

Footfalls in puddles, the storm pressing down between his shoulder blades, Jacopo unable to look up into the blinding rain as he follows the page’s soaked-through boots. He has always been terrified for his eyes. The biles and fluids of his body he fears will be overtaken by the force of the rain, will turn his body against him. Make him blind. He makes no conversation with the page. The noise of the storm would steal his voice even if he tried. Gratefully, the young man never talks.

The darkened city twisting and turning under foot. Bridges flicker in and out of vision through fog and downpour. The wooden bridge of the Rialto. Crossing the Grand Canal. Only a few lights in the city’s windows, upper floors in this affluent area. Late night business dealings worthy of a candle.

Merc. S. Salvatore.

He wishes for an oiled skin, a tarp, a boat, a Venetian belongs on the water. Two water streets: Rio della Riscaula to Canal Grande to San Marco instead of the rat warren of paved footbridges and alleyways.

The Doge's late nights used to scare Jacopo. He used to wonder if the man was possessed or was bartering away his health and soul. Now it seems a friendly gesture from a lonely man, unable to sleep and troubled by the world he inherited. Many of Jacopo’s friends, those that have been able to prop him up against tradition, even as he antagonized the other painters of the guild, as he got the commissions they desired badly enough to wish him dead, a mortal sin, these same influential people